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Budget

Lee budget avoids cuts, but some say too few benefit from the boom

05.31.13 - 11:42 am | Steven T. Jones |
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Mayor Ed Lee today released his proposed 2013-15 city budget in the Board of Supervisors Chambers at City Hall, a $7.9 billion spending plan that he said reflects the “San Francisco values of fiscal responsibility, social responsibility, and investment in our city’s future.”Read more »

Ed Lee's "no social service cuts" budget

05.29.13 - 12:18 pm | Tim Redmond |
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So Mayor Ed Lee is going to spare social services, and apparently at least part of the Department of Public Heath, from any further budget cuts. That's good. Lives will be saved.Read more »

The parking fee's too low

City streets are being rented out for a pittance

08.14.12 - 4:58 pm | Guardian Editorial |
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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is reviewing its policy on neighborhood parking, which is a positive step: The current system has been in place for more than 30 years and has become an unwieldy mess. But the agency needs to do more than just aggregate districts and set uniform rules; it needs to adjust the concept of preferential parking, meters, and prices to reflect the reality that San Francisco can't afford (and shouldn't promote) free parking.Read more »

Compromise measures

Housing and business tax propositions don't solve the city's problems, but both sides say they're the best we can expect

07.31.12 - 5:05 pm | Steven T. Jones and Shawn Gaynor |
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news@sfbg.com

San Franciscans are poised to vote this November on two important, complicated, and interdependent ballot measures — one a sweeping overhaul of the city's business tax, the other creating an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that relies on the first measure's steep increase in business license fees — that were the products of intense backroom negotiations over the last six months.Read more »

Public teacher in a public hospital

An educator's trip to the ER reveals an unpleasant truth about our city's budget

06.26.12 - 5:04 pm | Guest Opinion |
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By Sasha Cuttler

OPINION San Francisco Unified School District teachers and Department of Public Health nurses are going through difficult times. Despite years of service reductions, layoffs, and ceaseless budget pressures, teachers continue to educate San Francisco's young people while nurses care for the sick and injured.Read more »

The cost of shorter school days

06.26.12 - 11:02 am | Tim Redmond |
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Everyone agrees that Jerry Brown is taking a huge gamble, putting big automatic education cuts in his budget in the hope that he'll convince voters to approve his tax hikes in November. It may be a wise political move: Most voters in California seem to support education spending, even if they still (wrongly) think the state wastes too much money on other services. Read more »

Lee avoids budget drama, but other fiscal fights loom

05.31.12 - 3:03 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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When Mayor Ed Lee unveiled his proposed $7.3 billion city budget today, it was a sharp contrast to the annual budget rituals of his predecessor, Gavin Newsom, both in style and substance. Not only did Lee present a budget without employee layoffs or cuts to critical social services, but he capped months of collaborative work with the Board of Supervisors by presenting his proposal in Board Chambers.Read more »

The Obama budget, beyond the politics

02.14.12 - 11:45 am | Tim Redmond |
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Man, the way the president's talking it sounds as if he's appointed the General Assembly of OccupySF to write his budget plans. He's going to make everyone pay a fair share of taxes. He's going to invest in affordable higher education. He's going to spend $350 billion on jobs programs. Just about everyone in the news media is calling it a "populist budget."Read more »

Editor's notes

When public schools can no longer afford to buy paper, it's time to reconsider the tax system

02.07.12 - 5:01 pm | Tim Redmond |
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tredmond@sfbg.com

I got a message the other day from my son's public school, begging parents to go out and buy a few reams of paper, because the school is almost out and can't afford any more. Seriously: A public middle school in San Francisco doesn't have enough paper for the school year and has to ask parents to go to Costco and pick some up.Read more »

Editor's notes

Why being the mayor "of the 100 percent" isn't good enough

01.10.12 - 5:29 pm | Tim Redmond |
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tredmond@sfbg.com

It's hard for California cities to raise taxes. Almost anything that amounts to a tax hike has to go before the voters, and most of the time, it requires a two-thirds vote.

But in a year when the local legislators are also up for election — and six of the supervisorial districts are up this fall — the voters can pass taxes with a simple majority.

That's one reason that 2012 is a perfect year for tax reform in San Francisco. The other is the spirit of Occupy.Read more »